Renault not only wrote many books on his experiences during and after the war but also wrote books on the faith and on Fatima. If anyone is offering to translate some of his books not yet in English I am happy to be a taker. If anyone has any further information on Colonel Rémy please contribute.

Gilbert Renault (August 6, 1904 – July 29, 1984) was known during the French Resistance under the name Colonel Rémy. He is one of the most famous secret agents of occupied France during the Second World war, and was known under various pseudonyms such as Raymond, Jean-Luc, Morin, Watteau, Roulier, Beauce and Rémy.

Gilbert Renault was born in Vannes, France, the oldest child of a Catholic family of nine children. His father was a professor of Philosophy and English, and later the inspector general of an insurance company. He went to the Collège St-François-Xavier in Vannes, and after his studies he went to the Rennes faculty.

A sympathizer of French Action in the Catholic and Nationalist line, he began his career at the Bank of France in 1924. In 1936, he began cinematic production and finances, and made J'accuse, a new version of the Abel Gance film. It was a resounding failure, but the many connections Renault made during this period were very useful during the resistance.

With armistice declared of June 18, 1940, he refused to accept Marshal Philippe Pétain and went to London with one of his brothers, on board a trawler which departed from Lorient. He was one of the first men to adhere to the calls of General Charles de Gaulle, and was entrusted by Colonel Passy, then captain and chief of the BCRA, to create an information network in France.

In August of that year he met with Louis de La Bardonnie, and together they created the Notre-Dame Brotherhood, which would become NDT-Castille in 1944. Initially centered on the Atlantic coast, it ended up covering much of occupied France and Belgium. This network was one of the most important in the occupied zone, and its information allowed many military successes, as the attack on Bruneval and Saint-Nazaire.

Convinced that it was necessary to mobilize all forces against the occupation, he put the French Communist Party in touch with the exiled government of Free France in January 1943. Gilbert Renault later admitted it was Pierre Brossolette who got him in touch with political groups and trade unions.

Awarded the Ordre de la Libération on March 13, 1942, he became a member of the executive committee of the Rally of the French People (RPF) from its creation, in charge of trips and demonstrations. He appeared in Carrefour, April 11, 1950, in an article entitled 'La justice et l'opprobre' (Justice and the Opprobrium), in which he preached the rehabilitation of Marshall Pétain. A short time afterwards, he adhered to the Association of defense of the memory of Marshall Pétain (ADMP). Repudiated by de Gaulle, he resigned from the RPF.

He settled in Portugal in 1954 and returned to France in 1958 to be placed at de Gaulle's disposal, who refused. He was also very active from this time onwards in various associations, including ultra-conservative Catholic networks.

He died in Guingamp, France, in 1984.

Renault wrote many works on his activities in the Resistance. Under the name of Rémy (one of his pseudonyms in clandestinity), he published his Mémoires d'un agent secret de la France libre et La Ligne de démarcation (adapted for cinema by Claude Chabrol in 1966), which are regarded as important testimonies on the French Resistance.

He had the writer Jean Cayrol under his orders.

Decorations Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur Compagnon de la Libération - décret du 13 mars 1942 Croix de guerre 1939-1945 Médaille de la Résistance avec rosette Distinguished Service Order (G.B.) Officer of the Order of the British Empire (G.B.) Officer of the Legion of Merit (U.S.) Officier de la Couronne de Belgique Croix de Guerre Belge Commandeur du Mérite (Luxembourg)

HomageAround 1993, a street in Caen (France) was named after Colonel Rémy,[1] in a district close to the Mémorial pour la Paix museum, where a majority of streets commemorate personalities linked with the Second World War, the Résistance, and the subsequent making of the European Community.

Excerpted from Wikidpedia...disclaimer as to 100% accuracy as with all Wikid articles I post.

_________________On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus.

- St. Robert Bellarmine

Sun Jul 29, 2012 2:59 pm

Katie

Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 8:13 amPosts: 194

Re: Colonel Rémy - French Resistance Hero's Anniversary Tod

Here is an excerpt from some correspondence years ago from John Daly.

I have both read two volumes of his fascinating war-time memoirs. I have also discussed him with Fr Belmont who knows rather more about him.

Incredibly courageous and perceptive and good man, who was given what passed for a Catholic education in the France of his day, but wasn't one, and succeeded, gradually, over a lifetime, in correcting a large part of the omissions, illusions and errors, but probably not all, and hence is not 100% trustworthy. How's that for a summary?

Throughout the war he worked in dangerous espionage missions for the resistance, headed by de Gaulle. So far I have no problem. He at the time admired and liked de Gaulle and detested Marshal Pétain as a traitor. That is a problem. But after the war, restudying the issues, he came to see that his own view, then the popular and only politically correct one in France, had been wrong and that Pétain was not a traitor and de Gaulle a very flawed hero. That is the stage he was at when he wrote the memoirs we have read and his conversion on these points, to which he constantly alludes, is very edifying. However, he recounts without batting an eyelid (a) the fact that he carried cyanide in order to kill himself, if taken, to avoid running the risk of betrayal, and (b) that he transmitted money to communists to assassinate German soldiers (who at the time were not enemy troops in occupied France after the armistice signed by the head of state). I don't know how much of this he cleared up later on. He was a traditionalist in the 70s and I don't think he lived longer than that. A friend of my hero Fr Berto, who may have succeeded in getting some doctrine into his head.

BTW in the memoirs, not addressed to a Catholic audience, he describes how he airlifted a damaged church statue of Our Lady from France to England during the war, under very dangerous conditions, had it repaired at his own expense and after the war flew it back to France and returned it to its proper place. Couldn't help loving the man for that even if he had done nothing else right in his life.

_________________On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus.

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